egulate the entire
world. They strove to subject life, multiple and many-sided, to
the unity of the mind, that is, to _their_ mind. The time-serving
trickeries of a sophistical profession facilitated this imperialism of
the reason; they knew how to handle ideas, twisting, stretching, and
tying them together like strips of candy; it would have been child's
play for them to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle. They
could also prove that black was white, and could find in the works of
Emanuel Kant the freedom of the world, or Prussian militarism, just as
they saw fit.

The historians were the born scribes, attorneys, and lawyers of the
Government, charged with the care of its charters, its title-deeds,
and cases, and armed to the teeth for its future quarrels.... What is
history after all? The story of success, the demonstration of what has
been done, just or unjust. The defeated have no history. Be silent,
you Persians of Salamis, slaves of Spartacus, Gauls, Arabs of
Poitiers, Albigenses, Irish, Indians of both Americas, and colonial
peoples generally!... When a worthy man revolting against the
injustices of his day, puts his hope in posterity by way of
consolation, he forgets that this posterity has but little chance to
learn of former events. All that can be known is what the advocates of
official history think favourable to the cause of their client, the
State. A lawyer for the adverse party may possibly intervene--someone
of another nation, or of an oppressed social or religious group; but
there is small chance for him; the secret is kept too well!

Orators, sophists, and pleaders, the three corporations of the Faculty
of Letters,--Letters of State, signed and patented!

The studies of the "scientifics" ought to have protected them better
from the suggestions and contagions of the outside world--that is, if
they confined themselves to their trade. Unfortunately they have been
tempted from it, for the applied sciences have taken so large a place
in practical affairs that experts find themselves thrown into the
foremost ranks of action, and exposed to all the infections of the
public mind. Their self-respect is directly interested in the victory
of the community, which can as easily assimilate the heroism of the
soldier as the follies and falsehoods of the publicist. Few scientific
men have had the strength to keep themselves free; for the most
part they have only contributed the rigour, the stiffness of th